USPS to Close 82 Distribution Centers Nationwide In Major Cost Savings Effort

The financially plagued USPS (United States Postal Service) has announced its plans to close 82 of its facilities nationwide. According to Channel3000.com, the USPS will begin closing affected facilities in January, 2015, impacting 15,000 total employees. The USPS distribution center closings are the organization’s next round of drastic budget cuts as it grapples to pay its bills. Fox23.com tells us that at present, the USPS is bringing in about $8 billion less than it did five years ago. By consolidating its distribution facilities, the USPS is hoping to save about $750 million annually.

Postal employees in the cities affected are taking the news with trepidation, as many of them have seen this scenario play out before. Fox23 informs us that Susan Wells, a member of the Tulsa Postal Workers Union based at the USPS’s soon to be closed Tulsa, OK distribution center, stated that, “We’re looking at possibly 300-400 people to find jobs for,” and, “We’ve been through this before a couple of years ago.” Mrs. Wells has worked for the USPS for 30 years and has learned that her facility will be consolidated with another USPS distribution center located in Oklahoma City.

Similar scenarios are getting ready to play out nationwide. The USPS has published a consolidation list on its website. Channel3000 informs us that the USPS will soon be closing its Madison, WI facility along with three others in the area. The source further tells us that the nationwide distribution center closures will have an impact on the speed at which your first class mail is delivered. When the network consolidation has been completed, the USPS estimates that about twenty percent of first class mail will be delivered overnight, more than 35 percent will be delivered in two days, and 44 percent of first class mail is expected to be delivered in three days.

For the 15,000 or so employees the USPS projects to be impacted by its network consolidation plan, they can breathe at least a little easier knowing that the USPS states on its own website that it intends to relocate affected employees to nearby distribution centers that will continue to operate. The significant challenge still looming for the USPS continues to be focused on causing the financial bleeding to slow or stop. After the USPS has completed its network consolidation plan, it expects to achieve a savings of $3.5 billion over the next five years. That’s still significantly short of the $8 billion drop in revenue the USPS has sustained over the last five years.

In order to mitigate its continuing budget woes, the USPS will need to look much deeper than even network consolidation. As the Inquisitr informs us, there are still plenty of cost savings opportunities that the USPS can take advantage of, if only it will continue to take an inward look.